Questions for Márquez Stories

Group signatures: ___________________________________________________________________________.

1) What do you make of the subtitle to “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children”? Is it really a story for children, or just for children? Why did the author include that subtitle, and how is the story, in fact, NOT for children?

2) We really never come to know the angel in “A Very Old Man…” very well, but it might be said that we come to understand the townspeople quite well in the course of the story. What does the angel’s presence reveal about these people? Their strengths, weaknesses, flaws, virtues, morality or immorality, wisdom or foolish? What does his presence reveal about their social, political, psychological and religious habits, practices, and traditions?

3) What do you make of the angel’s association with sailors and sailing? Don’t be literal in your response.

4) Identify a sentence or two in either story which strikes you as especially strange, moving, vivid, provocative, creepy, annoying, wise, ambiguous, beautiful, or true. Jot it down here, then talk and write about it for a couple minutes.

5) In general terms, how do the townspeople in “The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World” react to the body which washes up on their shore?

6) Why do the townspeople react to Esteban as they do? What is he to them?

7) Look at your response to #6 above. You’re not looking or feeling your way to the answer deeply enough. Try again, you dumbbells.

8) What is a “fable,” and how might “The Handsomest Drowned Man…” be considered a fable?

9) Notice that neither of these stories includes very much character development. That is, we really don’t get to know the complexities of any one person very well, and there doesn’t seem to be a main character or protagonist who changes in the course of the tale. Is this a flaw of the stories?

11) How are these story DIFFERENT from the fantasy or science fiction you may have read before?

12) Based on these stories, how would you characterize the genre of magical realism?